Listen to Big Feels on Spotify!
My favourite patron came into the library again:
“Oh hi! How are you?”
“I’m happy, so happy!”
“That’s so good.”
“Someone pushed me. I didn’t like that.”
“Someone pushed you? Where?”
“At the gym. Someone pushed me. I didn’t like that. But I’m happy.”
We went and talked to the security guard together. I tried to help him make a plan if it happened again. I’m always moved by his tenderness. How his heart is a whale’s mouth, filtering out the bad, letting in the good. He reminds me that it is a gift to be this soft, that I can be softer still.
There is an intricate dialogue always at work in my mind — “Yes, of course they said this, no of course they couldn’t have meant it.” Funny how I carry the best self of every person with me, like my imaginary friends, my secret companions floating along beside.
I remember when my mother was trying to shun me (I wouldn’t let her, lol) I kept using the word “bewildered.” I was addicted to that word. It was the only one I knew. Bewildered: “perplexed and confused; very puzzled.” I was so perplexed/confused/puzzled. I had carried her with me for twenty-seven years, a little ghost in my head. I knew her as my greatest confidante, why had she decided to cast me as the stranger?
But I suppose I was strange to her. I suppose I still am. When other people have kept their best selves as ghosts, I’ve done the opposite. Replacing my human self with a tidy best-in-show mirage; my ghost floating along beside being the self with hurt feelings and a sharp tongue. I can’t say if this is the better choice. I think perhaps it is not.
I got a tattoo last week and it wasn’t until after that I thought about my mother’s imminent reaction, wondered if I should have maybe opted for something less “hell-y.” I guess it’s growth that this was an afterthought. I guess I’m getting good at letting the ghost out.
My mind works so hard to keep up the alternate realities. Every relationship has two storylines running side by side at all times — the path taken and the path not. I have little ghost villages under near-constant construction in my head. It’s hard not to love everyone too much when every version, all their ghosts, are right there, holding hands and blowing kisses.
I’m trying to see people as they are now: not as they want to be or how I want them to be or who they have been or who they will be. I’m trying not to let this calcify my softness. I am hurt, I am happy. I am trying to hear what is being said, and only that; but mostly, I am learning to listen to the rebel whispers of my own ghost heart.
Talk soon,
Natahna
The Recommends: Doing the thing that makes your life easier — in my case, ordering in pre-made food from Just Bite Me in #yeg.
Gorgeous line after gorgeous line! 👻😎 Mm I especially loved this: “How his heart is a whale’s mouth, filtering out the bad, letting in the good” and “I’m trying not to let this calcify my softness.”
Love your new ink!